Sidonie Garrett is the Executive Artistic Director of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival where she directed the 25th anniversary production,Hamlet, and previous three season productions The Winter’s Tale, King Lear and Twelfth Night all awarded Best Play in Pitch Magazine’s BEST OF KC. She directed other Festival productions including The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet (2003, awarded Best Play by Pitch Magazine), Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, King Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor , King Richard III, Macbeth, rotating repertory productions of Antony and Cleopatra and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It. Sidonie directed the collaboration project, The Merchant of Venice, presented by the Jewish Community Center and Johnson County Community College, the first HASF indoor production.

Prior to joining the Festival, Sidonie worked as a freelance director. Her first projects were with her producing partner Jan Rogge and their company, Ground Zero Productions; The Widow’s Blind Date,Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and Serenading Louis. Her experience working with new plays took her to New York City, where she directed the off-off-Broadway production of Thanatos. Sidonie also assistant directed the off-Broadway premiere of the interactive Aunt Chooch’s Birthday Party. Locally she directed, Disgraced, How to Use a Knife,The Whale, I’ll Eat You Last, Other Desert Cities, The Motherf*&#%er With the Hat, Time Stands Still, In the Next Room: the vibrator play, Faith Healer, Rising Water, Iron Kisses, Retreat from Moscow, Omnium Gatherum, the world premiere of Thanatos, SubUrbia, The Waiting Room, Desert Holiday, Spinning Into Butter, SantaLand Diaries and co-directed Light/Damage with Cynthia Levin, at the Unicorn Theatre. Sidonie directed A Streetcar Named Desire for Kansas City Actors Theatre. At The Coterie she directed The Macbeth Project: In Spite of Thunder, the U.S. premiere of After Juliet, Mr. A’s Amazing Maze Plays, Little House on the Prairie, Little House by the Shores of Silver Lake, Of Mice and Men, Playing for Time and co-directed The Hobbit. Sidonie directed Rose’s Dilemma and Greater Tuna for the American Heartland Theatre, Reckless and Too Clever By Half for UMKC’s Rotating Repertory, and co-directed Tony & Tina’s Wedding (Kansas City and St. Louis) for Fourth Wall Productions. She directed Jason Chanos as Hamlet, for the Kansas City Symphony’s Supremely Shakespeare concert, and was the stage director for four seasons of “Magic of Christmas” and How the Symphony Saved Christmas. Sidonie was the stage director for Kansas City Civic Opera’s productions of The Marriage of Figaro and Falstaff. She directed Dancing at Lughnasa at the J, a Script-In-Hand reading of Much Ado About Nothing as part of the First Folio exhibition at the KC Public Library, eight plays in the first KC One Minute Play Festival and a staged reading of Rights of Passage as part of the KC Rep’s Origin KC new play festival. For HASF she directed collaborations with the Bach Aria Soloists, First Folio: 400 Years in the Making and Such a Charm: Shakespeare in Song with the Grammy Award winning Kansas City Chorale. This past year Sidonie directed collaboration performances with the Kansas City Ballet, Kansas City Symphony, JCCC’s Performing Arts Series a Script-in-Hand of The Tempest, Kansas City Actors Theatre and with KC Rep, the Kansas City Museum and many other partners.

Next up, she will the Festival’s 2019 production of Shakespeare in Love.

Matt RapportDirector of Education

Matt Rapport has been a performing arts teacher in and around Kansas City for over 20 years. His areas of expertise include Shakespeare, improvisation, and acting as well as physical skills including juggling, puppetry, and physical comedy. He has taught in a variety of settings including public schools, community centers, and art camps. Before assuming his leadership position with the Festival, Matt was a lead teaching artist here and for the Coterie Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Accessible Arts, and Theatre For Young America.

Some of Matt’s more rewarding teaching experiences have been with underserved students, including work with the Shakespeare Festival at ReStart, a homeless shelter in Kansas City, MO, and with Kansas City Repertory Theatre at DeLaSalle and Hilltop, both high schools for adjudicated youths. Matt also taught adults with Down Syndrome in a program offered through Accessible Arts. Matt is himself a professional actor and musician with many local and regional credits. He was an original member of the cast of the Festival’s Shakespeare to Go! and co-created and co-directed the Festival’s Romeo and Juliet to Go! Matt has been seen on the Festival stage numerous times. Favorite shows include The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, King Lear, and The Merchant of Venice.

Katherine Gehrlein
Director of Operations & Community Relations

Katherine Gehrlein began working with the Festival in 2016 at the Assistant Stage Manager for Twelfth Night and returned as the ASM for the 25th season production of Hamlet. Katherine is now the Director of Operations and Community Relations for the Festival, managing day–to–day administrative matters, coordinating volunteer activities, and overseeing daily operations. Katherine attended William Jewell College where she studied Theatre Education and received her MFA in Theatre: Design and Technology from UMKC.

Mariah Roady
Development and Marketing Associate

Mariah Roady began working with the Festival in summer 2014 as an education intern. Since then, she has been an active part of the education department as a Teaching Artist for the Shakespeare Conservatory and Team Shakespeare programs. Mariah now serves as the Development and Marketing Associate with areas of focus including fundraising, marketing, community outreach and other awareness initiatives. Mariah graduated from UMKC where she received her BFA in Theatre Performance.